


Boiling Point

by FroldGapp, radiofreekerberos



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Kuron, Kuron is Shiro (Voltron)'s Clone, M/M, blade of marmora
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-25 22:25:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14388366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FroldGapp/pseuds/FroldGapp, https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiofreekerberos/pseuds/radiofreekerberos
Summary: Keith had numbed himself for so long, he almost forgot what hurt felt like. Called back to the Castle of Lions, the memories come rushing back. Needed but never wanted. The loner. The hothead.Shiro's in trouble, and the team need him again now. But he's changed; transmuted by so much heat and pressure. Something had to give.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We routinely scream at each other about Keith and his relations with the other paladins. Here it is in joint fic form! Further chapters to follow ;)
> 
> get at us!
> 
> https://radiofreekerberos.tumblr.com  
> https://froldgapp.tumblr.com

Life was muted and grey, all underwater and lightless after Shiro left.

Keith had stumbled from meeting to meeting, training to dinner to training to bed again. Search after search, stretch after stretch of endless black space, and nothing. Just a hole in his chest and a film in front of his eyes.

Testing for the new black paladin, he’d watched the others climb up the long ramp and into Black’s waiting maw; hoping from the core of his spine to see those fathomless eyes spark gold.

It turned out Black was waiting for him. Even magical space cats knew he trailed Shiro like a shadow; would do forever.

The choice proved Voltron’s fallibility. Something Keith had always suspected, somewhere in his bones where Blue had first spoken to him. Voltron was horribly imperfect, despite the myths and jingoism of an extinct planet. Keith was a terrible leader. And in Black, a pilot of questionable merit. He hated every moment of it, and so did the team. Leaving for the blades seemed right and good; a choice borne out by tearful goodbyes but not a single request for him to stay. Because when Shiro resumed his place as the head of Voltron, everyone breathed easier; most of all Keith.

But now…

‘Keith, we’d like you to report to the castle when you can. There’s something… We want to talk to you about something.’

The something could only be Shiro.

oOo

Only Coran was there to meet him in the docking bay. Keith took one look at his face and instantly knew there was no ‘we’ about it. It was Coran who’d called him. Of course it was. Apparently Keith had forfeited his right to Team Voltron’s secrets the moment he left. The monthly status meetings with Kolivan were his only contact. Not that he’d expected anything else after washing out as team leader. Even so, he hadn’t really been expecting silence from Shiro as well.

“Do they know I’m here?” Keith asked Coran, even though he was pretty sure he already knew the answer. 

“Things have gotten complicated since you left,” Coran said, awkwardly chewing his mustache. 

That would be a ‘no’ then. Keith tried to ignore the flare of anxiety that blossomed in his chest at the thought of being an unwelcome visitor on top of being a failed paladin. 

“Complicated how? Where’s Shiro?” He demanded.

“He’s in a stasis pod,” Coran said, his eyes on the floor. 

Keith forced himself to breathe normally though his lungs had frozen to ice chunks inside his chest. Shiro had been fine at their last debriefing. He wouldn’t look at Keith, but he’d been standing in full view of the monitor. Keith took that to mean he would eventually forgive him for letting the team down, though letting Shiro down was proving much harder for Keith to live with. 

“How badly is he hurt?”

“Not  _ those _ pods,” Coran said quietly, “the other ones. The ones in the…”

The ones in the prison hold where they kept Sendak. Keith stood rooted to the spot, words failing him as he scowled at Coran and silently demanded some sort of explanation.

There was none forthcoming. Only the quiet tread of Coran’s shoes against the freshly polished floor as he led Keith from the hangar, and towards whatever trouble awaited him.


	2. Chapter 2

No one was speaking, including Coran. That’s what struck Keith first, not even Lance who’d never found a conversation he couldn’t hijack. Cold still air infiltrated Keith’s Marmora suit as he and Coran entered the hold, too softly for the others to lift their grim faces in acknowledgment.

Keith’s downcast eyes shifted to the pod where Shiro floated, his eyes shut and his hands balled into fists at his sides. It wasn’t the anger clearly etched on Shiro’s frozen face that concerned Keith. He’d seen Shiro lose his temper before. It was the depth of it. The way it twisted Shiro’s handsome features into something Keith had never seen before, something unrecognizable. If Keith didn’t know better, he’d have sworn it was someone else entirely floating in that pod.

“Keith, you’re here,” someone said tonelessly and Keith’s gaze reluctantly shifted to Hunk’s ashen face.

That was when the other paladins finally noticed his presence. None of them seemed particularly happy about it, Lance especially. Keith felt his entire body involuntarily tense at the look of open resentment on his face.

“What the hell Coran?” Lance snapped, as if Keith wasn’t even there. “I told you I’m handling this!”

“Handling what?” Keith demanded. He didn’t want a fight, even if Lance seemed ready for one, he just wanted to know what was wrong with Shiro.

“Look, I got this, okay Mullet,” Lance said dismissively. “No one needs you swooping in at the last minute to save the day, or whatever.” His voice was dripping with enough sarcasm to set Keith’s teeth on edge.

“Well…” Hunk said softly, appearing to regret it when Lance’s sharp eyes immediately fell on him. “I mean, if Keith can help shouldn’t we… um, let him? He is Shiro’s closest friend.”

“That’s debatable,” Lance snorted.

White hot anger flared inside Keith’s chest. Maybe Lance was right. Shiro’s silence felt like abandonment. Maybe he’d moved on and Lance was the person he confided in now. Keith couldn’t fault him for it, not when Lance stayed and he didn’t. But even if that was the case, even if Shiro turned his back on him, Keith would _never_ turn his back on Shiro, and the fact that none of them could see it was infuriating.

He was just so done. He pulled in a breath until his sternum burned, closing his eyes. In that brief moment of dark, he saw Regris’s tall form silhouetted against flowering reds and yellows, and Kolivan’s stern, patient face.

“Coran.” He turned to the mustachioed man, whose relief at Keith’s demeanour was made known in a sigh. “When you called me here, what did you have in mind? What do you want me to do?”

Eyeing Lance as nervously as Hunk had seconds before, Coran stepped forward and shrugged. “What you always do, Keith: talk to him.”

Keith turned back to the gaunt and grimacing face of his oldest – his only – friend. Cutting a wide arc past a narrow-eyed Lance, he approached the pod, feeling as though Shiro’s eyes would pop open at any second.

“He won’t answer you, Mullet,” said Lance, before finishing glumly, “He doesn’t answer any of us.”

Ignoring Lance was easy in the face of that great, broad body suspended like a dead thing in formaldehyde. Keith shucked his gloves off and raised his fingers to the glass, swallowing thickly. Through the cool, smooth surface, a deep note thrummed: Different from the blue lion’s harp-like chords, and world’s apart from Red’s single, sultry song of clarinet. This was a drone, a dirge. A blue note that wouldn’t resolve.

“Shiro,” Keith said.

Fists slammed against the glass. The group stumbled back with shocked gasps, and Keith – arrested by the glowing yellow of Shiro’s eyes – stood frozen. Distantly, he heard Lance mumble a curse and Hunk calling his name. He inched his right foot closer and spoke again. “Shiro. Takashi Shirogane.” The figure within the glass withdrew his hands and appeared to consider Keith for a moment, features softening.

Keith swallowed and listened for that horrible droning note again. It was faint, as though its bellows were once more being filled with air.

Shiro’s eyes blinked granite-dark and terrified. His mouth opened, eyebrows raised in the manner of a terrified child: _Keith?_

Keith chuckled, and issued a breathless, “Shiro!”

Shiro’s fists rocketed forward again. The right struck the glass with such force a fissure opened up in the pod. The droning bass note filled Keith’s head, and he reeled back arms flying. He fell hard on his backside and scrambled to his feet. Huddled back amongst the others, he regarded a once-again frozen Shiro together with them.

Hunk, cowering against a rigid Lance, whispered, “Has anyone else seen _The Exorcist?_ ”

Pidge chose this moment to speak up. Keith wished for the world she hadn't. “It’s obvious Keith’s connection to Shiro elicited the biggest response we’ve seen so far.” She turned to Coran. “Good call, man.”

The man simply dipped his head in her direction.

Lance’s face grew dark. “A negative response.” He levelled his eyes at a bone-pale Keith. “I guess you’re used to it, Mullet.”

Something stirred in Keith’s chest; the uncoiling of a creature he last put to bed after his altercation with Iverson. He tilted his head, thinking, but gone was Kolivan’s stern patience. Gone was Regris's steely resolve and Thace's calm and waiting smile. All hard-won wit had been shocked out of him by Shiro’s murderous eyes. He strode up to Lance; meeting him nose-to-nose.

“You think you’re speaking to the same skinny kid from the garrison.” Lance’s blue eyes were unbothered. His thin lips turned up in an expectant smirk. Keith drew closer, heard Blue’s song grow shrill, but ignored it. “You’re not. Don’t fuck with me when it comes to Shiro.”

“Keith…” Allura, eyes not wide with fear but narrow and judging, as though she’d expected this all along, stepped forward as though to intervene. She saw the galra in him as plain as day. He didn’t care. It’s what he was. It’s what Regris and Thace and Ulaz were.

“I’m talking plain as I can, Lance.” He pointed back at Shiro’s cracked pod, which had started hissing fluid from the fissure. “I’ll plant your teeth in that glass”

Lance stepped away from Keith, nodding and with eyes bright. “Make your own noose, Mullet. You’re showing your true colours now.”

Hunk, all sloping shoulders and weary eyes, ambled forward. “Okay, knock it off. Emotions are high, _etcetera_ , so… Let’s just take a minute and chill out.” He turned to Coran. “Can you like… reinforce that thing?” The man nodded. “All right, so let’s just go back to the bridge and talk about what happened.”

Pidge sighed. “Agree.”

Allura, eyes locked on Keith, echoed the green paladin.

“Okay,” said Hunk. “Okay?”

Lance scoffed, but nodded his agreement eventually. He shook his head as if emerging from a deep dive. “Whatever, yeah. I guess even a negative reaction is a reaction.”

Keith let them go a moment before falling in behind, dismayed that – just as they were rounding the corner into the elevator – Hunk cast an uncertain glance back over his shoulder.

Yellow’s song didn’t chime like always, but lay silent, as though a trembling finger hovered above its waiting keys.


End file.
